December’s Exceptional Story: Daylight

Gul, wheezing through a throat full of magnesium dust, sprinting blindly over a diorama of some farmers with a baby rat in their pocket, smashing face first into the Daylight Stalker's cold sticky clay chest for the THIRD TIME: Coachella sucks this year.

How much content do you miss if you don't take the Precocious Ratling with you?

From my understanding, the story difference is that, if you don't bring the Precocious Ratling, her parents give you the key to their former home, which is otherwise locked. I'm not sure if not bringing the Precocious Ratling locks you out of rescuing Mr Sock (her puppet snake). Bringing the Precocious Ratling should also give some extra text in a couple of places.

It also just occurs to me that Mr Sock probably symbolizes a Fingerking.

Can anyone tell me what is up with Daylight? I didn't take the Ratling or the zailor, so I don't know what is Mr Socks, the Stalker, and how it relates to Parabola. I don't know why the zailor is angry at me for blowing it up, and wht Daylight is so bright. Can anyone elaborate?

Can anyone tell me what is up with Daylight? I didn't take the Ratling or the zailor, so I don't know what is Mr Socks, the Stalker, and how it relates to Parabola. I don't know why the zailor is angry at me for blowing it up, and wht Daylight is so bright. Can anyone elaborate?

Daylight is a question mark for the lore, but I'll try to answer as best I can.

Mr Sock is the doll owned by the Precocious Ratling, resembling a snake. She was forced to leave it behind upon leaving the island. She mentions that if she had it with her, they could fight off the monster. That's not true, necessarily, but you can sacrifice the doll to avoid the Stalker.

The Daylight Stalker is the monster. It drains creativity and creates Dullness. It can be killed via explosion or by the mirror-lake, apparently. It has some kind of a connection to the Bauble. The Bauble appears to be a Parabolan entity, as it makes a deal with the Imaginator in the honey-dens of Veilgarden. The serpentine imagery in Daylight implies that the Bauble is a Fingerking, as well as its name, which follows the naming convention used by most Fingerkings (the Orts is the exception that proves the rule).

The zailor is angry, not because you blew up the Daylight Stalker, but because you blew up the Daylight Stalker. He irrationally thought that it was his fight and feels like you stole that from him.

Daylight's brightness is never explained. My best guess is that it's the Skin of the Sun (or some variation thereof) in Parabola seeping through.

^ Daylight's brightness is explained, sort of. If you read the notes in the workshop, you find that there's an apparatus that mists the whole island in magnesium and granulated silvered glass every so often, which a light source (presumably located in the workshop, but maybe also from under the lake? I don't recall) reflects off of. Essentially, the whole island is a giant ambient mirror. This is also, presumably, how the Daylight Stalker gets around so fast. (Presumably, the Daylight Stalker is some kind of corrupted form of the Assistant, who is revealed to have been only an Ushabti.)

Was the deal between the Bauble and the Imaginator for some sort of inspiration? I thought it was strange that a person would have so much creativity, enough to make an entire model town by themself while the Stalker was allowed to be their assistant, even though it is obvious about what it does. I know from the Renown 40 item for Bohemians that the Fingerkings often make deals with artists that lead to their fame (with unexpected consequences), so is this one of them?

I liked this one a lot! I sank probably 100 actions into exploring Daylight's every nook and cranny, it was fun.

Many thanks to Gul al-Ahlaam for explaining above exactly how Daylight got its... daylight. :P I'm very bad at natural sciences, so wasn't able to understand the mechanics entirely just from reading the notes.

Interesting that both stories in this Season so far ended up to be entangled with Parabola... one wonders if that's where the Unsettling Toymaker gets his ideas from, too?edited by phryne on 1/1/2019

--"Expect little, and little will disappoint you. But day after day, I expect as little as I can, as little as I can bring myself to, and still I find myself disappointed." ― The Solitary Sceptic

I've played it too now and I agree mostly to what was said before.The story has huge potential but the execution was somewhat lacking.

The characters were shallow (except for the Ratling, she was gorgeous!) and the &quotafter-care&quot was unsatisfying.

On the other hand: Though exploring the island was an action sink, it was a good idea. Since the daylight was blinding you almost constantly, you were suffering from a certain degree of disorientation. I found that the mechanics were reflecting this factor very well.

The monster however could have used much more teasing and more complex confrontations. It was foreshadowed heavily in the prelude as well as in the artwork and was a central point of the narrative. The idea of the final fight went in a good direction but felt unrewarding in the end. Dare more complex puzzles! Make the player THINK and wonder. Allow room for failure and recovery. Make fights longer so that they feel more important! Make them feel hard but winnable! (Annotation: One could look in the Dark Souls-Series for more abstract inspiration on how to design good fights. The challenges seem impossible hard at first but once you get it, they can be laughably easy.)

I also liked the idea of not spelling out the lore aspects explicitly so that the player has to solve some puzzles as well. To make this work better, the text has to wrap around these puzzles better though. Or for example makes some NPC ask these questions (&quotWhere did the daylight come from? What was this thing?&quot). Nobody seemed to care.

(Also the Bauble needs some follow-up or its huge potential is wasted.)

Addendum: I also liked the idea of leaving the Imaginator somewhat ambiguous. But especially in this case the other characters need much more shape and definition! An explicit gay romance would have been fine as well.

--edited by Jeremiah Oathes on 1/7/2019

--Dr Jeremiah Oathes - Natural Philosopher, Alchemist and Anatomist (part-time). Occasionally in Service to the Crown and the Bazaar. Would like to dissect a Master (for science and mad laughter).